Connections: Establishing an Architecture of Interrelations

CONNECTIONS Establishing an Architecture of Interrelations

CONNECTIONS Establishing an Architecture of Interrelations

The Cosmos is full beyond measure of elegant truths; of exquisite interrelationships; of the awesome machinery of nature. — Carl Sagan1

SEAN LYON Supervised by Robert B. Trempe Jr. Arkitektskolen Aarhus 2019

Contents

vi Introduction x Project Intention Part I: The Body and Our Place in the Cosmos 2 Historical Interpretations of the Nature of Space 8 The Astrolabe 16 The Antikythera Mechanism Part II: Site Measurements 26 The Quantitative Night Sky 28 The Qualitative Night Sky 30 Mapping Qualitative and Quantitative 34 The Pinhole Cameras 38 The Uraniscope 42 The Island of Ven 46 Field Notes 52 Initial Measurements 54 Projected Intention Part III: Establishing an Architecture of Connections 58 A Mechanical Sky 62 The User Experience 68 Site Mapping 72 Geometric Logic

74 References

Introduction

awesome size of our minuscule pocket of the universe.

There is a deep and fervent desire in the human species to understand our place in the universe — to locate our existence within the cosmos. Is there a connection between the regularity of heavenly phenomena and the events on Earth? Can we understand ourselves by observing the clock-like motions of the planets, the sun and the moon? Where do we come from?

Can we become at one with the universe?

These are the kinds of questions asked by ancient cultures for millennia.

Some of the earliest evidence of mankind’s ability to count comes in the form of scratches on bones that appear to count the phases of the moon (figure 1)2.

Patterns were reconciled from scattered distribution of stars — a network of points told stories of warriors and gods that were

The night sky has always fascinated me.

One of my earliest memories as a child is looking up at the stars during a moonless winter night and being mesmerised by the sheer number of points suspended up above. The naive attempt at trying to count them only further adding to the complete awe I was experiencing.

Similar sentiments were felt as I got older: in my home city of Edinburgh, after a late night working in a pub I’d often take a detour home through Blackford Hill park (site of the Royal Observatory) and stare at the night sky.

On a trip to New Zealand I spent a night in Abel Tasman National Park. It was a perfectly clear, moonless night, far from any artificial lights, and the view was stunning — gazing towards the core of our Milky Way galaxy imbued a strange of sense of vertigo at the sheer vi

Figure 1: The Lebombo Bone The 29 hatch marks suggests early significance of the Lunar Cycle (29.531 days) to some ancient cultures of southern Africa. The bone has been carbon-dated to over 43,000 years old.

Figure 2: Algo‌-‌r(h)‌i(y)thms by Tomas Saraceno (2018) The hyper-complex interconnected installation is reminiscent of structures found in biological systems and in the large-scale structures of the universe

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illustrates how the very atoms that make up our bodies were forged in the cores of collapsing stars; and these atoms connect together to make molecules; and these molecules arrange themselves to make up the cells that give us life — cells that outnumber the number of stars in our galaxy and link together to make a living machine of vast complexity. Indeed, “we are all made of start-stuff”.

Similar ideas have been explored by the installation artist Tomás Saraceno. His work attempts to answer similar questions of ‘being’:

passed on from generation to generation.

Ten thousand years ago, aboriginal tribes at Mount Rothwell, Australia laid out stones to demarcate the midsummer, equinox and midwinter sunsets3. The early bronze-age people of Britain built the monumental calender of Stonehenge five thousand years ago; and the ancient Chaco culture of New Mexico built their great houses at Chetro Ketl to emphasise astrological alignments.

Ultimately, these acts of trying to understand comes down to a desire to feel connected with the universe. Philosophers and mathematicians sought to describe the motions of the heavenly bodies as a mechanical and predictable system — everything is interrelated and everything influences everything else.

During the Age of Discovery, there was a pressing need for increasingly more accurate star charts and measurements of solar and lunar cycles to aid in navigation.

In doing so, what was once thought of as a fixed, rational and geocentric universe was revealed to be variable, irrational and heliocentric. This period marked a time when we went from a mythical and qualitative universe, to a scientific and quantitative cosmos — divorced of god and unconcerned with human existence.

However, as we may have lost our spiritual connection to the heavens, Carl Sagan describes a more scientifically rooted theory of our place in the universe.

His landmark documentary series Cosmos

How are we embedded as a part of the cosmic web? Can we consider an insect and the vibratory cosmos in the same network of relationships? What are the possibilities for better attunement?4 His installations of spider webs, inflatables, membranes, nets and tensioned cable structures all seek to explore the relationship between the human body and mind to the celestial structures strewn across the universe — at the largest scales the filaments of galaxy clusters resembles that of the structure of the neural pathways in our brain. His exploration of installations intend to reestablish these connections in a spacial manner: his 2018 piece Algo‌ -‌ r(h)‌ i(y) thms (figure 2) is room-scale interactive installation stressing this very connection between humans, nature and the cosmos5. viii

Connection in architecture has many definitions — ranging from the concrete to the abstract, from small to large scales, and from the spiritual to the bodily.

Indeed, connections are fundamental to the practice of architecture. Ever since we as humans have been building our habitats, we has been adjoining smaller, easier to handle elements together into larger assemblies fit for occupation. Once we could build structures we started to assemble spaces together, and connect different programs in a meaningful way. Connecting the architecture to the surrounding landscape has been done for millennia — whether by building into the landscape itself, using on-site materials, or by framing views and aligning the volume to make the best use of local topology.

And of course architecture can connect us together as a society — fostering a sense of community that emerges and evolves.

Pritzker Prize winning architect Peter Zumthor is a trained carpenter. As such, he has an acute understanding of joinery and construction, and how a mastery of connecting two elements together is critical to a successful architecture:

As well as the visual and physical connections in architecture, there is also an underlying field of invisible connections — the relationship between things.

Almost like the gravitational attraction of two stellar bodies or the electromagnetic interactions of sub-atomic particles, buildings can be connected to their surrounding environment.

Field conditions are a bottom-up phenomena: defined not by overarching geometrical schemas but by intricate local connections. Form matters, but not so much the forms of things as the forms between things.7 In his seminal essay From Object to Field, Stan Allen describes an architecture sensitive to the conditions of site. Unlike the Modernist doctrine of embedding form onto an environment, Allen argues that the field needs to be considered, and in doing so a new architecture can develop.

By moving away from the Modernist thinking of architecture as an aggregation of elements and moving towards a composition of relationships between elements, architecture can develop beyond the Cubist sense of composition that has largely remained within the practice. By focusing in on local connections a fluid, emergent form is produced that responds to variations in local context.

Construction is the art of making a meaningful whole out of many parts ...

I feel respect for the art of joining, the ability of craftsmen and engineers ... I try to design buildings that are worthy of this knowledge and merit the challenge of this skill.6 ix

Project Intention

In our modern urbanised world the night sky has made way for artificial lights, tall buildings and increasingly airborne traffic. Light pollution obscures all but the brightest of stars and smog further hinders the passage of light from the sky.

Perhaps the moment that this everyday disconnect from the cosmos was made abundantly apparent was during a blackout in Los Angeles in 1994. Upon seeing the unobstructed Milky Way galaxy in the night sky for the first time, some unaware local residents called 911 to report a “sinister silvery cloud” in the sky8.

The architecture outlined in this thesis project is an attempt to re-establish a connection between the body and the heavens. By framing stellar moments, inducing bodily movements, and initiating questions about where we are in the universe, I hope to rekindle this ancient

desire for a spiritual connection with the night sky. This project takes on a secular approach to this goal — I wish not to rely on pre-established mythologies, folklore, religions or faiths, but instead to work with the night sky itself and what it has to offer. I will take historical interpretations of the nature of space as a departure point, and translate contemporary ideas and theories into an architecture of the body.

It would be up to the visitors themselves to interpret the cosmos and to draw from it conclusions about our place and relationship with the stars.

Naturally, having the night sky as a main design driver lends the architecture to being a global one — an architecture that could exist anywhere on the surface of the planet (and, indeed, any future worlds that we may one day inhabit).

However, for it to become most effective x

Using this knowledge I will develop my own measuring devices that I will take to the site, and exercise the lessons learned from this initial analysis. These devices will capture the essence of the architecture that will be developed from the results of these studies, and demonstrate the desired intent of the architectural intervention.

Not only will I be making physical models, but digital ones too. Developing digital tools that simulate the night sky using contemporary theories of planetary motion and stellar position data sets will allow for the sculpting and arrangement of the buildings.

I wish to explore the potential of developing an architecture by creating and establishing connections and relations.

Looking at each scale of connection individually and as a whole, connecting them in such a way that each inform and instruct the others. My desire is to design an observatory — a place for the spiritual reconnection of the body to the universe.

it needs to be isolated yet accessible. Away from artificial lights, pollution and urban build-up, yet close to a large population centres and transportation links. As it so happens, Scandinavia presents the perfect opportunity — the small island of Ven is situated in the Øresund Strait between Denmark and Sweden, just north of Copenhagen and Malmo and south of Helsingør and Helsingborg. Not only is Ven an isolated island surrounded by urban centres it is also the historic home of the Danish Royal Astronomer Tycho Brahe.

Brahe inhabited the island between 1576 and 1597 where he built two observatories from which to make his measurements of the sky (figure 3)9. These star charts and recordings were far more accurate than any that had been made before, and made valuable contributions to the field of astronomy. He is considered to be last of the classical astronomers, working before the invention of the telescope and the accepted belief of a heliocentric model of the solar system.

By studying historical philosophical interpretations of space and understanding how ancient cultures saw themselves in the universe, an architecture can be developed.

I will look at a series of historic mechanical measuring devices, build working models of them, interact with and use them, and arrive at an appreciation for how these cultures translated concepts of space into physical objects manipulated by the body.

Figure 3: Stjerneborg - Plan xi

Part I The Body and Our Place in the Cosmos

Historical Interpretations of the Nature of Space

multitude of local directions, each associated with certain emotional reminiscences...Certain astronomical or meteorological events, such as sunrise and sunset, storms and floods, no doubt endowed certain directions with values of common importance.10

Philosophical thoughts on the nature of space have been around since the early days of conscience human thought. We have always looked up in awe at the night sky and asked questions about the meaning of reality.

Concepts of Space by Max Jammer gives a thorough outline of the history and development of these ideas, tracing a continuous connection from primitive associations of direction and place, on to the deliberate separation of space and experience, and then to contemporary theories of an interconnected time and space.

He starts out with the early interpretations of experience and the physical reality of the world in which we live:

It seemed that systems of space were determined not by objective measurement but by emotional responses to the environment and local conditions. Even with the development of measuring systems (length, area, weight) this abstraction of space as experience persisted for some time.

To an Earth-bound observer the sun appears to take one full day move across the sky and return to the same position.

The moon takes a slightly different time taking its own path across the sky, and the

To the primitive mind, “space� was merely an accidental set of concrete orientations, a more or less ordered 2

stars appear to rotate on a sphere whose axis aligns with the Earth’s geographic poles. The Earth feels stable: unmoving and solid. Plato associated the regular cube with the classic element earth — it is the most stable of the shapes and the only Platonic solid that can regularly tessellate three dimensional Euclidean space. And so it felt natural to surmise that the Earth is standing still and the heavenly bodies are orbiting around us.

This qualitative experience of the universe led to the geocentric model of the solar system, a system that persevered well into the Renaissance.

Figure 4: Detail of Kepler’s Mysterium Cosmographicum cosmological model pleased. Such an idea brings with it an existential crisis for our significance in the universe — heliocentricism questions the will of God and our privileged place in his grand scheme.

Modern science and philosophy was already prepared to accept the superior status of conceptual constructs over sense experience, yet the world of sensory experience with its qualitative distinctions and orientation was not given up easily as the ultimate basis of truth.11

The sixteenth century debate about the order of the universe was concerned particularly with the geometry of the cosmos, and connection between architectural theories and cosmology were predicated on this geometric interest. In the eighteenth century, this absolute “picture” of the heavens was replaced by a cosmology based on the relative motions of the universe.

Connection between architectural theories and cosmology then began to focus on the working of the cosmos.11

Faith in a geocentric model started to wane as more accurate measurements and recordings of planetary motion were made, and purely geometric models failed to account for discrepancies no matter how many modifications were made. When Copernicus introduced his heliocentric model of the universe with the sun taking the place of the Earth, he displaced mankind’s position from the centre of Creation. The church was not

A young Johannes Kepler tried to understand the physical structure of the 3

cosmos: he wanted to know God’s plan for the world. He later wrote “Geometry existed before the Creation, it is coeternal with the mind of God. Geometry provided God with a model for the Creation, geometry is God himself.”12 Looking at the Platonic Solids as the building blocks of the universe, he was able to infer a model of the solar system by nesting the solids in concentric spheres.

Each solid could be uniquely inscribed and circumscribed by a sphere, and so by nesting these within each other in the right order — octahedron, icosahedron, dodecahedron, tetrahedron, and cube — the six resulting spheres would represent the orbits of the known planets to within 10% of their observed paths (figure 4)13.

So pleased he was with this model he went on to write:

Mars, Kepler derived his Three Laws of Planetary Motion. Instead of the planets orbiting in perfect circles, they exhibited a path more akin to an ellipse, with the Sun occupying one of the focus points.

The mathematics fit the data perfectly and so this model became the accepted theory, the very same equations and figures are still used today for sending probes to the other planets and humans to the International Space Station.

The perfect circles and geometric shapes gave way to imperfect ellipses that process and are perturbed over time as the bodies interact with one another in complex ways. The old idea of a fixed sphere of stars came in to question too with the observations of supernova in 1572 and 1604 producing what appeared to be new stars. The universe was revealing itself to be a messy and chaotic system, and belief in a grand design forged by some great creator began to diminish.

Around the same time, a dispute between followers of Newton and Liebnitz argued on the nature of space and time.

Newton conceived of space as being absolute — it is a natural conclusion following his development of the Three Laws of Motion and his work on classical mechanics. Newton defined space as an absolute and fixed frame of reference by which the motions of objects can be measured and defined. Liebnitz on the other hand disagreed, and instead insisted that true motions are to be defined with

Here we see how God, like a human architect, according to order and principle, has approached the laying of the foundations of the world and has measured everything in such a way that one would like to think it was not art which was taking nature as its model but that in creation God himself looked at the building methods of future generations.14 But despite the harmonic beauty, the model just didn’t line up with observed data. Eventually, while studying Tycho Brahe’s measurements of the motions of 4

respect to the active forces that he took to be inherent in truly moving bodies.

This conception of relative space has been brought forward by Spanish architects Cristina Díaz Moreno and Efrén Ga Grinda (also known as Amid.cero9):

who sought a cosmological theory of our place in the universe derived from an understanding of perspective and perception: While the task of artists and architects in a Copernican world had consisted in relocating man a privileged geometric point (as exemplified by Caramuel’s oblique architecture and 17th century anamorphic projections) the “decentralising” of the Enlightenments point of view would find it’s concrete vehicle in Lambert’s theory of perspective, a “natural” perspective that defined only a relative image of the world, one of many possible points of view.11

Space is not a thing, not a physical reality that happens out there, but is rather a set of relations which are being constantly redefined as these entities interact with and transform each other.15 Space for them is not only defined as the physical reality in which objects exist, but also the socio-political and cultural space that we as conscious beings also inhabit.

And indeed, as conscious beings we perceive the world in a subjective manner and thus experience a qualitative understanding of our surroundings. In his seminal treatise on philosophy, the Critique of Pure Reasoning, Immanuel Kant prefaced his book saying that, just as Copernicus moved from the supposition of heavenly bodies revolving around a stationary spectator to a moving spectator, so metaphysics should move from assuming that “knowledge must conform to objects” to the supposition that “objects must conform to our knowledge”16. This echoes the work of Swiss mathematician, philosopher and astronomer Johann Heinrich Lambert,

His cosmological philosophy was directly influenced by Leibniz and his relational space. Lambert’s model of the universe consisted of an assembly of observers providing a multitude of viewpoints and perspectives in the universe. Indeed, Lambert reversed the foreshortening mechanism of perspective to derive an awareness of position, and this decentralised point of view was fundamental in his conception of a hierarchical universe as the stage for human action and placement.

As our place in the universe became decoupled with the privileged stand point of a centre, the universe got bigger too.

With the invention and development of the telescope we were able to peer deeper 6

This paradigm shift in our understanding of space raises questions of our influence on the world around us. If every atom exerts an inconceivably small, yet non-zero, force on every other atom in the universe, are we not all interconnected in fundamental ways to our home, our universe, and each other? What if we could tap into this connection, to know our true impact and position in the cosmos?

When Edwin Hubble observed that disant galaxies are speeding away from us it became apparent that the universe is expanding. Space has an energy intrinsic to itself and is constantly being created.

Our entire observable universe is racing away from us in all directions — the relative viewpoint of each of us is at the centre of this bubble of light extending 46.5 billion light years. Each of us, it seems, are at the centre of a dynamic and ever evolving cosmos.

into the cosmos. When Galileo turned his telescope to the skies he didn’t see gods and angels, he saw that the planets we in fact other worlds like our own. As Charles Messier charted the deep sky in 1771 he catalogued a series of fuzzy, nebulous objects and thought that they must be relatively close to the Earth. It wasn't until the 1920's before it became accepted that some of these objects were completely different galaxies — thereby shrinking and isolating ourselves.

As the field of astronomy branched off into cosmology — the science concerned with the study of the origin and evolution of the whole universe — the nature of space and time came once again into question.

With the development of non-Euclidean geometry in the beginning of the 19th century shattering the axiomatic Cartesian notions of a uniform and regular space, so too it seemed our physical space was no longer strictly Euclidean. Hermann Minkowski's combination of three-dimensional space and a fourth temporal dimension described a space predicted by Einstein's equations of special relativity. Space became relative — it was no longer an absolute Newtonian reference frame upon which bodies inhabit, and action is observed in sequence. Space became soft and plastic, matter and energy warps the very fabric of space and time itself, and in turn this distortion influences the motion of bodies. Matter tells space how to curve, and space tells matter how to move (figure 5).

Figure 5: Fixed Cartesian space and warped Minkowski space-time

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The Astrolabe

phases of the moon through a series of geared inputs.

Tom Wujec is a design thinker and researcher interested in the progression of technology. In a TED Talk dedicated to the astrolabe he explains how telling the time with the mechanical device affords the user with a deep understanding of the heavens and our place within it17:

The astrolabe is a medieval device that was widely popular in both Europe and the Middle East. In essence, the handheld device was a way for the user to make astro(log/nom)ical calculations and predictions. By measuring the angle above the horizon of the sun or a known star, the layers of the front face can be rotated into position with respect to the current date, and a model of the universe is made present in the users hands. From this picture information can be reckoned: the current time of day, the times and direction of sunset and sunrise, the relative positions of the stars with respect to the sun and the horizon, and the direction to true north. More advanced versions included dials for measuring heights, finding the cardinal direction towards religious sites for prayer, calculating sine functions, and one historical version could predict the

The way [the user] would tell the time is by a picture of the sky. He would not only know what time it was, he would also know where the sun would rise, and how it would move across the sky.

He would know what time the sun would rise, and what time it would set.

And he would know that for essentially every celestial object in the heavens...

Affordances are the qualities of an object that allow us to perform an 8

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encoded into the very function of the device is the geocentric belief that Earth is fixed, and that the stars, sun, moon and planets revolve around us. Etched onto the body of the astrolabe is a projected grid that represents our local horizon and sky, and the ‘rete’ — the plate indicating the positions of the stars and the ecliptic — revolves around this fixed reference frame. It seems then that the very design of the astrolabe is predicated on our selfperceived privileged place in the order of the heavens, and no doubt the method of operation reinforces this understanding.

Essentially these calculations of the sky can be broken down into the overlaying of two offset reference grids: the ‘fixed’ local sky and the ‘rotating’ celestial grid. By flattening them onto the 2D plane and rotating them with respect to one another, information can be extracted. This interplay between the fixed and the changing, the qualitative and the quantitative, the experienced and the measured, is at the heart of the device.

Notions of a fixed and absolute space verses a relational and relative space come into question — a debate that has raged from Aristotle, to Newton and Leibnitz, to present day cosmology.

Using the device animates the body in a visceral way completely unlike the using of a modern equivalent: holding the astrolabe by the chain, lining up the sight with your eye and the observed star or sun, aligning the alidade to measure

action with it. And what the astrolabe does is it allows us, it affords us, to connect to the night sky, to look up into the night sky and be much more — to see the visible and the invisible together.

He compares telling the time using the astrolabe with using a modern phone.

While technology has progressed we have gained accuracy and ease, but with progress we have also lost something — in the case of a device for telling the time we have lost our intuition for our place in the universe.

What we gain with a new technology, of course, is precision and accuracy. But what we lose is a felt sense of the sky, a sense of context. Knowing the sky, knowing your relationship with the sky, is the centre of the real answer to knowing what time it is.

The key innovation that enables the device to function is that of the stereographic projection of the sky. The astrolabe represents the Earth, and with it the users body, as being situated at the centre of a celestial sphere — the inside surface of which the stars are suspended.

Imaginary rays are drawn from each star and grid point down to the south pole of this sphere, and where they intersect the plane that represents the equator of said sphere, the projection is taken. Indeed, 12

the object’s altitude, rotating the rete into position against the local sky, and placing the rule over the corresponding position of the zodiac date. It is this procedure and subsequent playful interactivity that makes the astrolabe so capable of instilling the user with a sense of place and order in the heavens. Holding such a model of the universe in one’s hand is an enlightening moment — irreplicable in contemporary time-keeping devices.

What does this mean for spatiality in architecture? How can a built intervention reconcile between a persons individual notions of space and place? Can an architecture act as a way-finding device on cosmic scales?

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The Antikythera Mechanism

In the spring of 1900, a group of sponge divers off the coast of the Greek island of Antikythera discovered an ancient ship wreck at the bottom of the sea.

Subsequent expeditions recovered a trove of forgotten artefacts, from pottery to statues, to a mysterious geared mechanism heavily eroded by centuries of exposure to the sea waters.

Decades of research revealed the purpose of the device: that it was an incredibly intricate mechanical calculator for modelling the apparent motions of the sun, moon and planets in the sky18.

The intricate clockwork machine has been dated to around 200bc and is far more complex than anything known ot exist before it. Indeed, this level of mechanical sophistication won’t be seen again until the European clock makers of the Renaissance.

A hand crank on the side of the wooden case engaged a complex multitude of gears that drove pointers on the dial, revealing the apparent positions of the planets with reference to the ecliptic plane. Centuries of Babylonian and Greek records of the heavens informed the design of the machine, with the varying yet predictable movements of the planets modelled to surprising accuracy — eccentric changes in the speed and indeed apparent direction of the heavenly bodies are presented for use in astrological predictions.

Such a complex device indicates an importance bestowed onto the knowing of these positions of the planets. Ancient cultures made intricate connections between our mortal realm and that of the gods — to understand what is happening in the sky is to know the will of the gods.

This machine shows this understanding of 16

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of heavenly motions were devised and compound cycles, like the Metonic cycle, devised that could begin to re-establish order.

However, the Metonic cycle was still not accurate over longer time periods. The Antikythera Mechanism features a smaller dial for the Callipic cycle — essentially a cycle of Metonic cycles that repeats every 76 years. While this still isn’t completely perfect — an error of around one day occurs every 553 years — it was plenty good enough for the ancient Greeks.

Another dial rotates every four calendar years, and each quadrant is marked with one of the main Panhellenic Games. This dial, known as the Olympic dial, presents the cultural importance associated with the cyclical divisions of the year, of the daily movement of the sun across the sky and of the yearly procession along the ecliptic.

The second spiral dial somewhat remarkably predicts the time and day of lunar and solar eclipses. The ingenious gearing mechanism is based on the observed Saros cycle — a period of 18 years, 11 days and 8 hours. One Saros cycle after a known eclipse the relative geometrical arrangement of the positions of the Earth, Sun and Moon is almost exactly the same and so an eclipse repeats.

The 8 hours means that the while the positions of the bodies are the same, the Earth itself has progressed one third of a day since the last cycle end, meaning the

the solar system as a piece of clockwork — something that is regular, unchanging, and revolving around us. Ancient cultures told stories in the stars, it was the realm of the afterlife and of the gods. Heroes and beasts were found in the scattered patterns of the stars and significance was determined in the particular ones that the sun, moon and planets were visiting. These ideas that still propagate today in the form of the Zodiac. Connections between the heavens and body were constructed, and so modelling the dynamics and predicting their motions afforded a possibility of understanding not only the night sky but also an understanding of ourselves.

The Antikythera Mechanism not only represented planetary positions in time, but it also acted as converter between different calendrical systems19. One of two large spiral dials on the back of the device indicated the current date of the machine.

This worked on the Metonic cycle: every 19 solar years is almost exactly equal to 235 synodic lunar months. The ancients believed in a strict geometric order to the universe — the idea of perfection is in line with the perceived will of the gods.

However, as progressively more accurate measurements were recorded over time, this perfection began to break down.

A month is not exactly 28 days, a year not precisely 365 days, and the Zodiacal constellations appeared to process across the sky by a small amount each year.

Progressively more complex models 18

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orbits: the planet would ride upon a circle that itself would be orbiting the Earth (figure 6). Like the compounding of calendrical cycles to compensate for drifting accuracies, the compounding of circles solved, at least for a certain level of accuracy, the issues of retrograde motion.

While the astrolabe is a device that is a projection of space, the Antikythera Mechanism is a projection in time. The user winds the crank with their hand — the clockwork motions of the planets dance around the front dial and the calendar pointers sweep arcs through time. This model of the universe depicts an image of a mechanistic cosmos, one designed by an almighty creator — the inner workings of interrelated and interconnected parts work together to achieve an extended picture of the cosmos and our place within it. It is a rendering of metaphysical ideas into a machine. Can the same not be said for architecture?

Figure 6: Epicyclic Model of Planetary Motion eclipse will occur around 120° westwards of the last one. Therefore, every three cycles an eclipse is expected to occur over the same site. This compound cycle of Saros cycles is known as the Exeligmos (Greek: turning of the wheel) cycle.

The mechanisms deep within the machine responsible for the planetary motions are based on an epicyclic model of the solar system. With the Earth at the centre of the universe and the planets orbiting in perfect harmonious circles, the planets would take on precise arclike paths in the night sky. However, as astrologers recorded the movements of the wandering stars, they noticed irregularities: sometimes the planets appeared to slow down, stop, reverse direction, and then return back to their expected motion over the course of a few weeks or months.

The apparent solution to this discrepancy was to introduce compounded circular

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Part II Site Measurements

The Quantitative Night Sky

The act of mapping and charting the night sky (known as astrometry) is an act that has been undertaken by civilisations for millennia.

The oldest known star chart that is thought to exist may be a carved mammoth tusk, a drawing that resembles the modern constellation of Orion that has been dated to be over 30,000 years old20. Cave paintings found in France resembling that of the charging bull of Taurus and the open star cluster The Pleiades has been dated to more than 21,000 years ago21. The ancient Babylonians compiled star charts in the latter half of the second millennium BC22 and Egyptian astronomers charted the heavens in 1534BC23. Knowing the positions of the visible stars, nebulae and galaxies were essential for navigators engaged in trade and exploration, and so as societies advanced so did their capabilities

for measuring the objective night sky.

Indeed, the island of Ven played a vital role in the historic narrative of celestial mapping. Tycho Brahe, between 1580 and 1597, made remarkably precise measurements of the night sky. Using oversized quadrants, sextants, parallactics, globes and armillary spheres — instruments so large they became a part of the architecture of his observatory itself — he catalogued over 1000 stars to within one arc-minute of accuracy (1/60th of a degree)24.

Today, the European Space Agency’s Gaia space observatory is currently making the largest and most concise map of astronomical objects — a database of over one billion objects will help us to understand where exactly we came from, and where we may one day call our future home25.

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The Qualitative Night Sky

facing cliff overlooking the sea to watch the sunset unobstructed. We might move halfway across a country to get a view of an eclipse in cloudless skies. A falling meteor might catch the corner of our eye and we whip our body around to witness the momentary bright streak fade from view.

An architecture that truly respects the night sky should respect these moments.

It should respond to the unpredictable and quantitative dimensions of our shared experiences of the stars and should connect us in fundamental ways to the nature of the sky.

Our experiences of the night sky changes each night and from place to place. The sky is a dynamic realm — the heavenly bodies of the moon, planets and comets engage in their elegant dances; man-made satellites catch the sunlight and strike a temporary etching of their path into the darkness; local weather conditions hinder observations, or indeed sometimes frame specific moments; and the nearby terrain can enhance the view or block certain horizons.

These interruptions, disturbances, events and moments cannot be quantitatively mapped — they do not appear in printed star charts or are presented in mechanical models of the sky. these are the momentary aspects of astronomy and observation that actively bring the body into the act of star gazing.

We might move ourselves to a certain west 28

Mapping Qualitative and Quantitative

hand in front of you and making a specific hand gesture, different angular degrees can be formed. Referring to a map like the one presented opposite, simply move across the direction vector and pace out the required number of degrees to find a rough approximation of the target objects location. During a particular star gazing session, this movement was captured to film. By stacking discreet frames on top of one another (a technique often employed in astrophotography), the motions become quite apparent.

We occupy a world often represented and measured in Cartesian XYZ space, yet we experience the world in spherical polar coordinates. Relative angular direction (north, east, south, west, left, right) is more useful to us than orthogonal directions — how can an architecture inform the body using these tools of way-finding?

Despite these fundamental opposition in the objective and subjective night sky, a technique for navigating the constellations presents a potential for intrinsically connecting the body to the stars.

We are all familiar with a handful of constellations (or at least the principle of them), and can perhaps quite effortlessly recognise some of the brightest stars. These in turn can be used to locate other objects in the night sky by projecting imaginary lines between two stars and continuing this line across the sky for a set number of degrees. Acting like road signs, these arcs between stars are called asterisms, a term used to describe familiar and apparent patterns.

Once the two guide stars are found and a direction determined, one can use one's own body to mark out angular measurements. By outstretching your 30

32

33

The Pinhole Cameras

The camera obscura technique has a rich storied history as a tool for understanding and as a representational aid. Some theories suggesting that palaeolithic cave paintings were done with the aid of a pinhole projection, and the ancient Chinese text Zhoubi Suanjing (1046BC) describes projecting an image of the sun and using it read the current position of the sun to determine the time of day26. Before the development of glass optics, a pinhole camera was used as a way of projecting our three dimensional reality down to a two dimensional surface (parallels can be drawn with the stereographic projection of the interrelated reference grids of the astrolabe). This technique was key to developing our understandings of the nature of light, perspective phenomena and our ability to perceive our environment. This relates

to Lambert's theories of perspective and determining ones own position. As part of developing his theories, Lambert designed a machine, a sort of intricate pantograph, for translating orthographic plan drawings into a perspective image.

Measuring the qualitative aspects of the site is possible using a rudimentary pinhole camera where traces of the suns path across the sky can be made. The tracing can become disturbed and interrupted by local weather affects (wind, cloud cover), nearby terrain and light sources. As such, a series of small cameras were developed that can be deployed discreetly around the island. The field of view of the device is 150° — the same as the human eye and therefore merging the limits of human perception with mechanical endurance.

34

36

37

The Uraniscope

indicating degrees is present. The user can navigate the night sky by sighting the centre of the disc onto a known star, rotating the vector pointer to the desired rotation, and moving along this line counting, the degrees travelled. This can be used in conjunction with the asterism map presented above to find oneself in relation to the night sky.

The left eye bears witness to an oculus.

Setting the input dial of the mechanical device to the current Zodiacal position of the sun rotates a larger opaque disc perforated with two circular holes, allowing for or obscuring the left eyes ability to see. The fully closed position represents a full moon, and thus poor star gazing conditions. The fully open position represents the absence of a moon, and thus the eye can see the stars far more clearly.

The Uraniscope — named after the Greek muse of astronomy Urania — is a custom device that serves two functions: to aid in the navigation of the night sky, and to predict the quality of the observation on any given night. The device engages the body by both inducing movement and precisely affecting one's ability to see.

The Uraniscope can be read as taking on the form of a pair of spectacles, binoculars or a camera. Holding the device up to one's eyes affords an extended understanding of the night sky by augmenting regular vision with additional information.

The right eye is presented with two transparent discs, each of which have concentric circles inscribed onto their surface. These rings correspond to a visual angle: 1°, 5°, 15° and 20°. On the outer disc a vector line is also etched, and a dial 38

40

41

The Island of Ven

The Swedish island of Ven is the chosen site of this architectural installation.

Since the program is so intrinsically connected to the night sky, having clear skies is paramount to successful observation. Therefore, remote sites away from city lights, air pollution and urban build-up will be necessary. However, despite being remote, the site should also be well connected and accessible so that it may be enjoyed by many people.

The small island of Ven is situated in the Øresund Strait between Denmark and Sweden. It has an area of only 7.5km2 and a population of around 350 inhabitants.

It is surrounded on all sides by large cities: Copenhagen, Malmö, Helsingør and Helsingborg, and punctuates one of the busiest shipping lanes in Europe.

The island has swapped between being a Danish and Swedish territory multiple

times in its history, and can therefore be seen as a connector of the two nations.

But what makes this island particularity appropriate is its historic connection to the field of astronomy. The Royal Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe inhabited the island between 1576 and 1597 where he built an observatory unparalleled in scope during that period. Here he made the most accurate star catalogues of the time, and his data paved the way for future scientists to make breakthroughs in our understanding of the heavens.

Shown here is a satellite map of the region showing the light pollution levels.27 Ven occupies the centre of a sort of 'black hole', surrounded by urban development yet isolated in the darkness of the Øresund Strait.

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44

45

Field Notes

cliffs are lined with thick forests. The church of St. Ibb is perched on a steep hill overlooking the village of Kyrkbacken and the Danish coastline, and is consecrated to the patron saint of pilgrimage:

As one approaches Ven aboard the small passenger ferry from Landskrona, the profile of the island is quite striking: tall sea cliffs bear the rolling fields above the calm waters; small multicoloured houses dot the coastline; a lighthouse can be seen on the eastern horn of the island; rows of trees demarcate the fields of rapeseed and durum wheat; and up on the highest point on the plateau rises the spire of Allhelgonakyrkan — the location of the site of Tycho Brahe’s observatory. Upon getting closer to the island it becomes apparent that this is a special place — isolated both in space and in time.

Wandering around Ven during the day is a tranquil experience in itself.

Idyllic villages and hamlets scatter the island, connected only by unpaved gravel roads. The rest of the land is blanketed in a patchwork of fields, and the tall coastal

Those who travel to an island isolate themselves. Not everyone feels at home on an island. Some stay for a short while only, because the island limits them. For others, the limitation helps them to stop for a while and calm down. Those who travel the seas pass through here in a steady stream, both night and day. The boats, the waves, the currents and the winds dance constantly around the small island.

And in the middle of this pulse of life the island lies still. St. Ibb’s Church is consecrated to James, the patron saint of pilgrims. The pilgrim is also 46

round trip while stopping to enjoy the views.

However, the island takes on a different energy during the night. Despite being surrounded by urban sprawl, the Ven enjoys spectacular skies. The sparse villages and broad fields allow for little interruption. The high sea cliffs gives great views all the way to the horizon from the edges of the island, and from the interior the gentle slope makes for a local horizon barely 100m away.

There seems to be a respect for the stars on Ven, owing to the local history of astronomy. This island is ideal for an architecture that engages the body with the sky, and for instilling a feeling of connectedness with the cosmos.

constantly in motion, constantly on the move. But the pilgrim realizes the importance of stopping for a while each day, to step aside. To find the strength to go on. In the middle of this stream of life from east to west, from north to south the church on top of the island points in another direction, towards heaven. She reminds us that life also has a vertical dimension, easier to reach if you stop for a while, step out of the middle of the whirlwinds of life and find rest like an island in the sea.28 The island is a calm place, it is a place of peace. There isn't much here to distract you — the loose collections of houses form vague villages and towns, a golf course, a small whiskey distillery and a museum to the life and work of Tycho Brahe. Three small harbours become the temporary homes of Danes, Swedes, Germans and Norwegians who sail here on yachts that pepper the local waters. Despite visiting during the Easter break there was barely a soul in sight.

A walking path circumscribes the whole island and gives visitors a comprehensive view of the island. The path follows the dramatic cliffs, weaves through rolling golden fields, and traverses pockets of trees — a journey that does nothing less than to sweep the mind away as you take in the beautiful landscape. The whole island is easily traversable by foot, taking around 7 hours to make a whole 48

50

51

Initial Measurements

set camera directions were determined using the astrolabe. The cardinal direction of where these events will happen for the days that the exposure were taken were calculated, and the placement of the camera was aligned using the body of the astrobale as a guide. Exposure times varied from 5 hours to 3 days.

Around the perimeter of the island are markings indicating the percieved light pollution coming from the mainlands. The lengths and tone of the lines represent the brightness — the longer and darker the more intense the light. These measurements presented here are a combination of both objective photographic data and subjective experienced encounters.

Presented here is an initial mapping of the measurements taken on the island during the three night visit.

The series of dials scattered across the island indicates the location and direction vector of each of the pinhole cameras. The cameras focused on the sunset (x2), sunrise (x1) and daytime (x2). The locations were determined by factors such as view clarity, local landmarks and isolation. It was paramount that the cameras would not get disturbed during their multi-hour and multi-day long exposures. As such they were placed on the edges of fields away from roads, or in long grass that obscured their presence while maintaining view clarity.

The direction was determined by the intended goal of the exposure. The daytime cameras faced due south so as to capture the solar noon, and the sun rise and sun 52

Projected Intention

The act of travelling to the island and engaging the site with a series of machines and devices (astrolabe, pinhole cameras, Uraniscope) became a sort of prototype of the sense experience that visitors should engage in: the astrolabe allows for orientation and an awareness of interrelations of stellar objects; the pinhole cameras highlighted framed views and tracked change over time; and the Uraniscope engaged the body by facilitating motion and physical action.

Ven invites visitors to explore, to move around and to bare ones own position in the world — this project should extend that perception beyond our atmosphere and establish a connectedness with our own cosmos.

The architecture of this project should be an architecture that respects the night sky.

It should be a place that translates fixed, predictable and quantitative heavenly objects (stars, planets, the moon, the sun) into an emotional, spiritual, qualitative response (awe, wonderment, appreciation, mindfulness), via the mechanism of a built and occupied form.

Bringing forward the specific way of thinking that is engaged in the creation of mechanical representations of the heavens, a recursive function can be derived:

The user (body) interacts with the architecture (machine) to evoke an emotional response (experience). This in turn animates the body and changes the users behaviour creating a feedback loop.

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Part III Establishing an Architecture of Connections

A Mechanical Sky

where they will be in the sky requires an iterative program that calculates the laws of planetary motion first laid out by Johannes Kepler. These equations were derived from data collected by Tycho Brahe on this very island, so designing with this data charges the architecture with a deep and fundamental history.

Once these planets are oriented in Cartesian XYZ space, calculating the local sky polar coordinates involves shifting the digital model from a heliocentric coordinate system to a geocentric reference frame. The modern algorithms needed to model the night sky harks back to ancient beliefs in the nature of space — thereby connecting the architecture, and indeed ourselves, with the rich history of placing our body within the cosmos.

In order to design an architecture for the cosmos, a method of generating a detailed simulation of the night sky is imperative.

Time was spent to design and code digital tools in order to guide the design and provide the necessary information.

First, the positions, names, and classifications of fixed heavenly objects were compiled — stars, galaxies, clusters and nebulae. These were plotted onto a virtual spherical surface — the 21st century version of the ancient Greek idea of the celestial crystal spheres. From there, constellation lines and boundaries can be drawn depicting the 88 contemporary Western constellations. This sphere can then be oriented based on ones latitude and time of day so that the local sky can be drawn for anywhere on Earth.

Calculating the planets and the moon are a lot more involved — predicting 58

import rhinoscriptsyntax as rs

c = 1 - e[j]*math.cos(E)

import math

dd = E - s - M[j]

v = []

deltaE = dd/c

M = []

B = abs((2*0.0000001*E*c)/s)

r = []

E = E - deltaE

xp = []

iteration+=1

yp = [] zp = []

if iteration > 100: break

x = [] y = [] z = []

tau = math.sqrt((e[j]+1)/abs(delta)) * math.tan(E/2)

Delta = [] Beta = []

if e[j] != 1:

Lambda = []

v.append((2*math.atan(tau) % (2*math.pi)))

for j in range(0,9): r.append((a[j]*(1-pow(e[j],2))) / (1+e[j]*math.cos(v[j]))) M0[j] = math.radians(M0[j]) O[j] = math.radians(O[j]) w[j] = math.radians(w[j])

xp.append(r[j]*(math.cos(O[j])*math.cos(w[j]+v[j])

-

math.

+

math.

sin(O[j])*math.cos(i[j])*math.sin(w[j]+v[j])))

i[j] = math.radians(i[j])

yp.append(r[j]*(math.sin(O[j])*math.cos(w[j]+v[j]) cos(O[j])*math.cos(i[j])*math.sin(w[j]+v[j])))

n = math.radians(0.9856076686)/pow(a[j],3/2)

zp.append(r[j]*math.sin(i[j])*math.sin(w[j]+v[j]))

M.append((M0[j] + n*MJD) % (2*math.pi)) delta = e[j]-1

xp.insert(0,0)

q = abs(a[j]/delta)

yp.insert(0,0)

Mq = M[j]/math.sqrt(pow(abs(delta),3))

zp.insert(0,0)

W = math.sqrt(9/8)*Mq/e[j] u = pow((W + math.sqrt(pow(W,2)+1/pow(e[j],3))),1/3) T = u - 1/(e[j]*u)

for j in range(0,10): C=3 x.append(xp[j] - xp[C])

if e[j] == 1: v.append(2*atan(T))

E = T*math.sqrt(2*abs(delta))

y.append(yp[j] - yp[C]) z.append(zp[j] - zp[C])

Delta.append(math.sqrt(pow(x[j],2)+pow(y[j],2)+pow(z[j],2)))

iteration=0 s = e[j]*math.sin(E)

Lambda.append(math.degrees(math.atan2(y[j],x[j])))

c = 1 - e[j]*math.cos(E) dd = E - s - M[j] deltaE = dd/c B = abs((2*0.0000001*E*c)/s) E = E - deltaE

while pow(deltaE,2) > B: s = e[j]*math.sin(E)

if Delta[j] == 0: Beta.append(0) else: Beta.append(math.degrees(math.asin(z[j]/Delta[j])))

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61

The User Experience

horizon we have left the realm of the day time, but it is not quite the night just yet.

The transition between the two is not a discreet event, but rather a soft gradient.

Twilight has significance in many religions: Christian vigils are held during this time; obligatory Islamic salah prayers are made; and in Hinduism it is believed that Asuras (nature spirits) are active during these hours. To the east, opposite the site of the sunset, a band of pinkish glow in the sky can be seen. This is known as the Belt of Venus, and is followed by the dark band of Earth’s own shadow being cast onto the upper atmosphere.

At this time the first bright stars fade into view and we can stand and watch them slowly appear, one by one. Then, in the corner of our eye we catch a bright white point trace an arc across the dark blue twilight. At first we dismiss it as merely an

We start our voyage at the very end of the day. Occupying one of three sunset pavilions on the west coast, we stand witness to the beginning of the night.

The sunset is the end of the day — a time to look back on what has happened and to reflect upon past events. It represents an end of a chapter, and the eventual beginning of a new leaf. We wait and watch for that moment when the disc of the sun kisses the Danish horizon and a connection is made, in our perception, of a heavenly body making contact with our mortal world. The sky turns a vivid red and our preconceived notions of an eternal blue sky is shattered, and a wave of awe washes over us. We’ve seen sunsets like this countless times before, and yet we always seem to be witnessing it again for the fist time.

When the sun drops below the 62

63

wired to recognise patterns amongst the noise, and soon figures appear to populate the sky. We can use these figures — a triangle over there, two squares above us, that long line of bright stars on the horizon — to track the passage of time. Stars close to the western horizon disappear, only to be replaced by new stars rising over the eastern horizon. Towards the south these stars appear to be travelling faster than those in the north, and indeed, we come to realise that a lone medium-brightness star 56 degrees above due north is a sort of fixed point about which the other bodies seem to rotate. From our vantage point on top of the tower this star is centred in our view — a moment of rest in an otherwise consistently evolving heaven.

This star has been lauded since antiquity due to its fixed nature: it was known as the “ship-star” in 10th-century AngloSaxon England, in ancient Hindu it was personified as “immovable and fixed”, and has been associated with the Christian veneration of St. Mary.

Accompanying us on our night time voyage is the Moon. It somehow acts as a counterpart to our sun — a bright disc similar in size and tracing a similar arc across the sky. But the sun and moon are very different in nature, for one the moon appears to us, on this particular night, not as a circular orb but as a crescent.

Each night it takes a slightly different profile, and can even not appear at all.

It’s brilliant white light comes not from

aeroplane — after all we are close to one of the busiest airports in northern Europe.

But if we observe closely, this point of light is missing the tell-tale flashing lights of an aircraft. The silent and consistent trajectory is somewhat eerie, and then suddenly, as it passes over the Belt of Venus, the white light turns a deep red and a second later disappears from view.

We have just witnessed the flyby of the International Space Station — humanity’s outpost to the cosmos. Six astronauts from across the planet have just witnessed the sun setting from their city in the sky and have entered the Earth’s shadow. The geometry of our system is becoming more apparent — the Earth is a sphere that is illuminated by an orb that appear to move in relation to one another.

Eventually though, as these visible boundaries dissolve into darkness — night time has arrived. The world is a very different place during the night. Across the horizon, in almost every direction the neon glow of our cities create a perptual dusk, illuminating the lower skies and making evident the presence of our modern society. The unusual lighting plays tricks with our eyes and our sense of direction is compromised — we lose the sun as a sort of reference point, a wayfinding mark that indicates the southern horizon. Instead we must rely on the stars as our guide across the island. At first glance they seem random both in position and in brightness, but our brains are hard64

65

relative to the other stars, but if we could keep watching for many clear nights, we’d see its apparent position meander across the heavens. We’d also see that this traveller is not alone, that there are other such bodies making their own paths.

Some explore the whole sky, while others seem only to roam close to the sun. We now call these objects “planets”, after the ancient Greek word for “wanderer”. Many cultures attributed these movements to the activities of the gods in heaven and so sought to make connections between the dynamics of the cosmos and events here on Earth. Such influences have been vehemently disproved over the years, yet these ideas persist in our culture and in our imaginations. These specks of light are whole other worlds that may one day become our new homes, and they serve as a reminder of the planet from which we were born — “a mote of dust, suspended in a sunbeam”.30 As we make our way to the east coast of Ven, there is a faint glow emanating from the Swedish horizon. Like a sun set only in reverse, we witness the black sky fade to a deep blue, followed by the pinkish band of the Belt of Venus, and eventually, while we’re perched on our viewing platform over the cliffs above Bäckviken, the sun appears to us once again. The morning light seems different somehow, it seems whiter: clean and pure. A new start, a new dawn, a new appreciation for our cosmic place.

itself, but from the sun. The light reflected off if its surface hints at the presence of the great life giving force of our sun.

Ancient Greek astonomers deduced this fact in 428 BC and Han Dynasty Chinese people associated it’s light to the life force of chi. The song Reflection by the band Tool imagines a hypothetical conversation between someone and the Moon itself: And in my darkest moment, The moon tells me a secret: “As full and bright as I am, This light is not my own and, A million light reflections pass over me.

Its source is bright and endless, She resuscitates the hopeless, Without her we are lifeless satellites drifting”29 The passing of the phases of the moon act like a clock, a way to demarcate the passage of time and the separation between events. Space and time are fundamentally interlinked, to know where we are in the cosmos is coupled with an understanding of time.

As we make our way across the island, the stars twinkle in the turbulent air high above us. However, while we occupy a small pavilion in a remote field, our attention is drawn to a rather large and bright star that seems not to be affected by such disturbances. This is the planet Jupiter — so named for the Roman god of the sky. Initially, it seems to be fixed 66

67

Site Mapping

solstice. During the equinoxes the sunset is almost exactly to the west. As such, three pavilions will be introduced on the west coast, each representing one of these three principle sunsets. Likewise, three sunrise pavilions will demarcate the end of the user journey and frame the corresponding specific moments of the rising of the sun above Sweden. From this the locations of the interior pavilions can be established.

There are three prominent lighthouses on the island: two isolated in fields (one in the north western point and one to the south east) and one incorporated into the houses of Bäckviken to the east. These lighthouses — architectural utilities for way-finding, navigation and understanding of place — can be seen from nearly any point on the island.

However, there is an area close to the centre where this is not possible, an area

As described above, the architectural intervention suggests a journey across the island. Coupled with the experience of the site as a place for exploration, travel and pilgrimage, the architecture will be spread out across Ven. A series of pavilions and installations, ranging in scales, will tell the story of our place in the universe.

This will not be a museum or institution, but a place of spiritual connection and awakening.

The journey starts with the setting of the sun. As such, the west coast of the island overlooking Denmark will be the departure point. Framing the moment when the sun sets will be the main function of such a pavilion — however, at this latitude the cardinal direction of the sun set varies from, to within less than one degree, precisely south west at the winter solstice and north west in the summer 68

stars, imbuing qualitative characteristics into a quantitative sky, the network of installations is constellation where the sum of the whole is greater than the parts.

Matter tells space how to curve, and space tells matter how to move. There is no strict prescribed path that the visitors must undertake, instead there is just a hint, a guidance for where to go next. The user has agency and freedom, and must find their own way, their own journey, from one point to the next.

invisible to the sweep of the lighthouses rays. This place feels lost, and your sense of direction and place is compromised without such landmarks. Charting this territory highlights an area that is in need of a new ‘lighthouse’, a new navigation tool that reaches out and bridges the gap between the other beacons.

A distance field was also generated to determine pockets of isolation on the island (as represented by the contours).

It is important to place these pavilions in places away from built up areas — mitigating against local light pollution issues, noise and obstruction of views.

Then working across from west coast to east coat, the user will be guided by the artificial light on the horizon. Using what may be considered an undesirable quality of the site — the light pollution generated by nearby cities — as a tool for navigation, each pavilion will be silhouetted against the backdrop of our urban sprawl. From each pavilion site, rays pointing towards the portions of the horizon with the most light pollution are projected outward.

Local buildings and terrain are also taken into account. Where these rays start to intersect each other in areas isolated from local urban build-up, a mapping begins to form. This informs the final locations of the installations.

These points form a network — a field of Leibnitzian interrelated bodies.

Just like how ancient societies formed cultural images in the interconnecting of 70

Geometric Logic

The results of the mappings done on the island and the output of the digital toolset suggest many points, lines, directions, angles and territories. Following this information will sculpt an architecture that is a harmonious with the field conditions of the site. Starting with basic geometrical shapes that loosely define a volume (Platonic, Archimedean, Cartesian) they will become warped, shifted, distorted and softened by the presence of the body.

Matter (the body) tells space (place) how to curve, and space (architecture) tells matter (the user) how to move. Defining certain astronomical events and moments, the architecture will become a frame from which to experience these events. The form will be a natural extension of the landscape — one that instgates movement of the body and subtly directs the user course across Ven. 72

References

1. Sagan, C. Cosmos: A Personal Voyage (1980) PBS, September 28th 2. “The Origin of Numbers” The Infinite Monkey Cage (2019) BBC Radio 4, 21 January 3. Morieson, J. (2008) The case study of the Boorong in Vaiškunas, J. (ed.) Astronomy and Cosmology in Folk Traditions and Cultural Heritage Klaipeda : Klaipeda University Press 4. Saraceno, T. (2018) Our Interplanetary Bodies, viewed 10 Febuary 2019, <https://studiotomassaraceno. org/our-interplanetary-bodies/> 5. Saraceno, T. (2018) Algo-r(h)i(y)thms, viewed 10 Febuary 2019, <https://studiotomassaraceno.org/algorhiythms/> 6. Zumthor, P. (2010) Thinking Architecture Basel : Birkhauser 7. Allen, S. (1999) Points + Lines: Diagrams and Projects for the City New York : Princeton Architectural Press 8. Buck, S. (2017) During a 1994 blackout, L.A. residents called 911 when they saw the Milky Way for the first time, viewed 8 Febuary 2019 <https://timeline.com/los-angeles-light-pollution-ebd60d5acd43> 9. Brahe, T. (1602) Astronomiæ instauratæ mechanica Public Domain 10. Jammer, M. (1993) Concepts of Space: the History of Theories of Space in Physics New York : Dover Publications 11. Perez Gomez, A. (1997) Architectural Representation and the Perspective Hinge Cambridge : MIT Press 12. Sagan, C. Cosmos: A Personal Voyage (1980) PBS, September 28th 13. Kepler, J. (1596) Mysterium Cosmographicum Public Domain 14. Volwahsen, A. (2001) Cosmic Architecture in India: the Astronomical Monuments of Maharaja Jai Singh II London : Prestel 15. Moreno, C., Grinda, E. (2014) Third Natures: A Micropedia London : Architectural Association 16. Bencivenga, E. (1987), Kant's Copernican Revolution Oxford : Oxford University Press 17. Wujec, T. (2009) Learn to use the 13th-century astrolabe, viewed 8 Febuary 2019, <https://www.ted.com/ talks/tom_wujec_demos_the_13th_century_astrolabe?language=en> 18. Price, D. (1974) Gears from the Greeks. The Antikythera Mechanism: A Calendar Computer from ca. 80 B. C. Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, 64(7), 1-70. doi:10.2307/1006146 19. Freeth, T. (2008) Calendars with Olympiad display and eclipse prediction on the Antikythera Mechanism Nature 454, 614-617 (31 July 2008) 20. Whitehouse, D. (2003) 'Oldest star chart' found viewed 1 June 2019, < http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/ science/nature/2679675.stm > 74

21. Sparavigna, A. (2008) The Pleiades: the celestial herd of ancient timekeepers arXiv:0810.1592 [physics. hist-ph] 22. North, J. (1995). The Norton History of Astronomy and Cosmology New York and London : W.W. Norton & Company 23. von Spaeth, O. (2000). "Dating the Oldest Egyptian Star Map". Centaurus International Magazine of the History of Mathematics, Science and Technology 42: 159–179 24. Swerdlow, N.M. (1996) Astronomy in the Renaissance London : British Museum Press.

25. GAIA Summary (2017) viewed 3 June 2019 < http://sci.esa.int/gaia/28820-summary/ > 26. Tseng, Lillian Lan-ying (2011) Picturing Heaven In Early China. Harvard East Asian Monographs 336 (1st ed.). Cambridge : The Harvard University Asia Center 27. Light Pollution Map (2015) viewed 5 Febuary 2019, <https://www.lightpollutionmap.info> 28. Kyrkorna – pärlorna längs leden (2017) viewed 3 June 2019, < http://www.pilgrimsvagen.se/wp-content/ uploads/Ven_St_Ibbs_kyrka_2014.pdf > 29. Carey, D., Chancellor, J., Jones, A., Keenan, M, (2001) Reflection Los Angeles : Volcano Entertainment 30. Sagan, C. (1994) Pale Blue Dot New York : Random House

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